


The Art of Compensation

by antistar_e (kaikamahine)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-21
Updated: 2007-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:11:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaikamahine/pseuds/antistar_e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where's the parenting guide for people like her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Compensation

**Author's Note:**

> done for a 2x5obsessions prompt, "a succession of ordinary days", and written before Battle of the Labyrinth was even published. Read here or [@ LJ](http://veritasrecords.livejournal.com/62978.html).

**.monday.**

"Come on, Mom." Percy slides his arms underneath her knees and shoulders and hefts her up off the ground -- it takes him two tries, because while he grew the muscle overnight, he isn't quite sure how to use it yet. Sally's aware of this, but only from a great distance, like she's cooking dinner and watching the television show of her life at the same time.

She lets her head loll against his shoulder, as she feels too tired to hold it up on her own. "Are we going home?" she wants to know like she is the child and he's the adult, probing her split lip with her tongue curiously. He smells like licorice.

She doesn't listen to the answer, just to the voice, the familiar voice.

She catches a glimpse of Luke around the curve of her son's body, watches the strange way his mouth stretches into the shape of a kidney bean. His face turns an unattractive shade of red and fat, ugly tears roll their way down his cheeks. Hermes reaches out; Luke screams something unintelligible and twists away. He picks up a rock and throws it. Hermes lets it deflect, then moves again, grabbing Luke's face between his hands. The boy wrenches with his whole body; his father doesn't let go, pulls him forward.

Her hands clench unconsciously on the fabric of Percy's garish Camp Half-Blood t-shirt. They crumple there, in the dirt, Hermes holding on, deadly silent, and Luke with his face buried in his chest, screaming and crying and needing. It's just the two of them -- that's all its been, since the very beginning. This was their war.

She's just not sure who's clinging to who; parent or child.

 

 

**.tuesday.**

Sally Jackson hates licorice. She hates everything about it, from its texture to its aftertaste to the way it sticks together in the bag. She told her coworkers this her first year, but they only remember that she mentioned licorice at some point and since then have given her a bundle every year for Christmas.

Once (and she remembers this very clearly), she brought it home and when her son smiled at her, teeth stained black, she thought, _This is why I had kids._

She never forgave herself for that.

Her son sits at her table, head in his arms and sunlight from the window slanting across his back. She measures him for new jeans, waist to knee, knee to ankle; numbers stretching longer than she's ever gone before. She ignores the scratches. She ignores Riptide hooked on the hem of his boxers. Three years ago, she might have said something. But she doesn't think Dr. Spock covered comforting a son who just saved the world; how can you look someone like that in the eye and lecture them about trivial things like the state of his clothes?

She gets up, goes to the fridge, gets out this year's bundle of licorice. Says she could put it in some blue food dye, if he wanted.

He says no thank you.

 

 

**.wednesday.**

The phone's ringing when she comes through the door, laundry basket tucked under one arm and leftover coins from the laundromat jingling in her pocket. The first thing she notices is the place is permeated with the smell of salt water: with a terrified thud of her heart, she drops the laundry basket onto the sofa and darts down the hall. She catches herself on Percy's doorway and breathes in relief: he's exactly where she left him, sprawled face down on his bed, dead (she flinches) asleep.

She drifts back towards the kitchen, calmer now.

There's a note waiting for her on the fridge, pinned underneath a Mickey Mouse magnet. It glows faintly blue in the dim light, and from where she is, Sally can see the trident seal beneath the sharp letters of her name.

The phone's still ringing, so she goes to answer it, never taking her eye off that slip of paper, as if she's waiting for it to explode.

"Sally?" goes Paul's voice from the other end, but he continues without even waiting for an answer, even though she's informed him that her son's back home (and he instantly understood that was important, that was _gravitational_ and for this she loves him.) "Sally, you won't believe who just swaggered into my classroom --"

"Hey, Paul?" she says. "Can I call you back?"

"Sure," he says, instantly set on alert by her tone. "You all right?"

"No," she answers honestly. "But I will be. It's Percy I'm worried about."

She sets the phone back into the cradle, and feels a flare of anger ignite in her belly, so bad that her vision swims for a moment. She fights the desire to tear the note up and fling the pieces helter-skelter. It's hard to believe that they've come to this; leaving each other notes like they're in grade school. She breathes deep, but the smell of salt water is gone.

She might have been disappointed, she thinks, if she hadn't stopped waiting before she'd even begun.

 

 

**.thursday.**

Sally gets Chinese take-out on the way home from work, but Percy isn't there. He left a note -- not attached to the fridge -- explaining that Annabeth had dragged him to the museum (by complete force, he might add.) He doesn't specify which one, even though New York isn't exactly spoiling for options when it comes to museums, so she'll just have to trust that he'll come home safe.

For the moment, though, she feels just like any mother would, and for the rest of the night moves around the house deliriously happy. Her son, after all, is spending the evening with a _girl._ A nice, level-headed girl who -- somewhere between getting a perfect score on the practice SATS and saving the world -- had become _pretty._

 

 

**.friday.**

It's not like they have cable, so they spend prime time watching reruns of really crappy game shows from the eighties. Sally makes popcorn, Percy fetches them all Pepsis from the fridge, and Grover gets so excited after they eliminated all but two contestants that he starts chewing on the aluminum cans, even though one of them wasn't empty.

Sally, at least, got him to do this _away_ from her couch. Percy says something sarcastic and Grover shoots Sally a scared look; the kind of vulnerable look people exchange when they're pretending and they don't know what to do next. He always was a terrible actor.

"I'm amazed you two have gotten any of these right. Since when did you even know what the eighties were?" she tosses her head mockingly, digging in her pocket for hair tie. Her son's eyes are on her, watching her movement with an expression torn between satisfaction and relief. After all, she was his consolation prize from the very beginning. Percy Jackson, you're a hero and your fate will never be happy: here, we'll spare your mother's life. Consider it a gift from us before we screw you over. Love, the gods of Olympia.

He'd been fully expecting to have to give her back after fulfilling the prophecy. He'd spent his formative years mourning her.

"I lived the eighties," retorts Grover.

"Poor you," Percy shoots over, and that just might be a flash of laughter in his eyes.

"Challenger A," goes the host on screen in the next breath, with his overbright false smile and his false teeth. "In the historical category, who according to Greek mythology is the main sea god?"

Sally swears quietly in the silence of her heart. This must be what two steps forward, one step back feels like.

"Mom," says Percy, all humor gone from his face. "Change the channel."

 

 

**.saturday.**

They stand together on the top floor of the Empire State Building (not the 600th floor, but the one right below it, the one that opened out to a mortal skyline, complete with the graffiti and smog.) On principle, Sally keeps an honorary two paces between herself and the teenage boys she's escorting -- it cannot seem like they're associating with her, oh no. That would be embarrassing.

She crosses her arms against the faint chill. Grover's telling them, quietly but not with any particular subtlety, about the latest job Pan's given him. Sally isn't sure about its legitimacy, personally, but to suggest to any satyr not to fulfill their god's every wish was just asking for it. Still, Grover wasn't old enough to get Pan an extra-dry martini, complete with Italian olives. Although the beard that had been threatening for ten years had now finally and truly landed, she notices with some surprise.

"Happy birthday," Percy says to Nico, his voice low, the way one might speak in a ward filled with war veterans. The way Sally herself has been speaking around the house, actually.

Nico says nothing. They bump shoulders, leaning together on the railing. Sally had been young once; she knew this was the closest they were ever going to say, "I'm sorry." And the other, nudging back, going, "I forgive you."

Then Grover, who had developed a rather understandable fear of heights, snatched Nico's paper "sweet 16!" crown from his head and started munching on it anxiously, and both Percy and Nico chased him down to retrieve it, even though both of them had been complaining about how girly the crown had been not five minutes ago. Testosterone. Really.

And Sally realized, much as she had with Hermes and Luke, that she didn't know which one of them had been apologizing, and which one had been forgiving.

 

 

**.sunday.**

Sally catches a glimpse of the latest news headline on the subway and starts in surprise -- she had forgotten the grander schemes of things, the movements and dramas of the mortal world. A revolution had sparked in Laos this weekend, the headlines said, and the President is considering sending the troops he can ill afford. She wonders if Ares liked it in Laos.

How hackneyed it all seemed; battles of life and death in Laos, the bill statements she had to turn in today or risk getting her water shut off, the commercialization of the next holiday, the rather pungent smell of peppermint the man next to her was shoving down her nostrils, when she knew the gods at this moment were rebuilding Olympus.

She rids herself of this thought, quickly and efficiently like she's spreading insect repellent or scooping detergent, because what is her life but a myriad of human moments, human needs, human chores. She _is_ human: her son is not and he needs her, Sally Jackson, to be as human as possible right now, so he doesn't fall into the same muddy tract that Luke did. He needs to remember that integral part of him that makes him so shameful to his father -- _Poseidon,_ she thinks, and it has the first time she has mentioned his name in weeks, even in her own head, and she closes her eyes against the flash of memory. It's like remembering a battle wound.

The subway stops at her station and the glare from the lights give her an almost clear image of herself on the glass, and she looks at the lacerations on her face, bruised a nasty blue and green but healing, and thinks that's exactly what it is.

She says hello to the superintendent on her way up the stairs, thinking she should call Paul and tell him what just dawned on her, before remembering that he'd be with her up until the "my son's not human" point. Then again, they'd been dating for two years, and he'd been with her through all sorts of trauma involving her son. Maybe he'd be relieved to know Percy isn't a budding juvenile delinquent out to break his mom's heart.

"Percy --" she starts as she unlocks the door, and stops.

He turns to face her, Iris message glowing behind him, not unlike Poseidon's note had until she'd stuck it down the dispose-all before he could see it, and she gives Annabeth a brief wave. Athena's daughter smiles sympathetically and waves back. Something explodes behind her and she doesn't even blink.

"Mom," goes Percy, and the excitement trembling in the undercurrents of his voice makes Sally's throat constrict. He has Riptide in one hand, she notices, and knows exactly what he's going to say. "Mom, they need me. Argus is coming to pick me up, but I need to go. There's a --"

"Go," she says gently, smiling at the surprise in their faces. Then she frowns. "But you need to do the dishes first."

"Aww, Mom!" he exclaims, nose wrinkling.

 

 

-  
fin


End file.
